Simon Willems' paintings are a delicate and intriguing blend of humor, beauty, and unease on a precise and subtle scale rarely seen in Los Angeles.  "Cloud Music" includes work from over the past two years, ranging from the 5 1/2 x 6 1/2 ft painting "I think we're alone now" from 2006 to the 30 x 22 inch work on paper entitled "Free range" from 2008.  "Free range" is a perfect example of how Willems manages to paradoxically deftly harness both looseness and precision in his method of application, creating a work that neither becomes entrenched in its own detail nor manic in its energy but remains harmoniously balanced between the two.  "I think we're alone now" (pictured on this site) depicts a silver drum kit placed on a comically 70s garage rug floating, or more accurately, sliding across some plane of deep space.  The cheesy pop song reference in the title adds to the feeling that Willems is poking fun at some notion of existential crises.  This seems to be the key of Willems' work, although his effect is decidedly surreal, his inspiration is weighted securely in reality, the odd effects he achieves given by an odd shadow cast or an awkward angle witnessed rather than through any surreal construct.

Although hard to distinguish, one of the strongest works in the show is the first you witness as you come in the gallery.  A disproportionately elongated figure balances in a complex yoga pose on his purple mat, the title of the work, "You are forgiven", etched across his back.  The background (which is also, incidentally, the foreground) is an indeterminable plane of horizontal ribbons of color, like a sea scape caught at the precarious moment of dawn.  Yet the figure casts an angular shadow, his extended limbs repeated in their undeniably cross like formation.  "You are forgiven", from 2006, is a mixture of imprecise Eastern and Western references lost in a sea with no location, again subtly mocking the existential complexities we involve ourselves in within contemporary Western society.

Willems' works certainly do not scream to be looked at, the occupy the gallery space carefully and unobtrusively, yet if given further inspection they offer an infinite well of possibility that engages the viewer far beyond the picture plane.